American students in France: the official numbers

The three numbers

These numbers answer different questions. No official page we read gives one count of every American who studies in France, whatever the length or type of program.

Year by year from 2013-2014

The ministry counts foreign students enrolled in French higher education at the start of each academic year, by nationality. Students of US nationality numbered 4,903 in 2013-2014, 6,943 at the peak in 2023-2024 and 6,388 in 2024-2025. Campus France's 2025 key figures print 6,943 for 2023-2024 and rank the United States 16th: that is this table's row for the rentrée 2023.

The count fell to 4,126 in 2020-2021, 38% below 2019-2020, and was back at 6,179 a year later. We found no source that sets out why for the United States, so we offer no reason. The count then rose to 6,943 in 2023-2024 and fell by 8.0% in 2024-2025. The ministry's table does not say why either.

Share and rank are computed from the table: the sum of every nationality in it, with the United States ranked among those that have a nationality code. The ministry's table covers the rentrées 2013 to 2024 and was last modified on 24 March 2026.

Where they study

The ministry splits the students in international mobility by type of institution and by region. Universities took 44% of the 5,483 students of US nationality in 2024-2025, business schools 18% and art, architecture and journalism schools 9%. The rest are in engineering programs and in other formations such as preparatory classes and short vocational programs.

In 2019-2020 universities held 49% and in 2024-2025 44%. Business schools went from 708 students to 962. The ministry publishes a count under 5 as "<5": we treat those cells as missing and our totals of "engineering and other" leave them out.

Ile-de-France holds the largest share, and the ministry groups every other region outside the four it names. The open table does not break the count by level (licence, master, doctorate) or by field of study. The ministry's other open table of enrolments does have levels and fields, but its only origin column separates students from foreign education systems from all the others, with no country. Campus France's key figures give levels for foreign students as a whole, and we found no level split for US students in them.

Permits for education beside the enrolments

Eurostat counts first residence permits issued to US citizens in France for education. They were 3,300 in 2013, 2,170 in 2017, 6,399 in 2022 and 7,303 in 2025. In 2025 education was 47% of the 15,388 first permits issued to Americans in France.

Until 2023 the permits for education were fewer than the enrolments every year. In 2024 they were more: 7,182 permits against 6,388 enrolments. The two series do not move together year by year. We found no official source that explains the gap between them, so we do not offer one.

What each count includes

The ministry's students of foreign nationality

The table counts students of foreign nationality in higher education. Its description separates two groups: students in international mobility, who hold a foreign secondary diploma or a French baccalauréat earned abroad and come to study in France after schooling abroad, and foreign nationals who earned their French baccalauréat in France. Together they make all foreign students. The column "all students of US nationality" above is that total and the column "in international mobility" is the first group. The ministry says it counts the mobility group directly for 97 percent of foreign students and infers it for the other 3 percent, mostly in paramedical and social training and in private schools not under contract.

Campus France's foreign students

Campus France's methodology page defines a foreign student in France as a student who declares a foreign nationality and is enrolled at a French institution on 15 January of the academic year for at least three months. It says that the ministry's student information system can tell apart degree students in mobility, students in exchange and foreign students who earned their baccalauréat in France. It also says that since 2018 the data France sends to UNESCO no longer include international exchange students, which made the French count look lower in that report.

Exchange students and degree students

The words mean different things in different sources. Campus France USA's Études en France file groups study abroad, exchange and dual degree students together as US college students who study in France for more than 90 days, and treats students admitted to a French degree program as another type. A US citizen in a program under 90 days needs neither the file nor a visa. That is a US-side category and a visa category. It is not the ministry's category.

Campus France USA's page on study abroad says over 17,000 US students study abroad in France every year. It does not say how it builds that figure, and it is larger than any figure in the ministry's table. We do not know which students make up the difference. The ministry's open table does not split exchange students from degree students.

Eurostat's first permits for education

A first permit is a permit issued to a person for the first time during the year. Eurostat defines a residence permit as an authorisation valid for at least 3 months, and counts a long-stay visa where national law grants one instead of a permit. The reasons are Eurostat's: education, family, employment and other. The count is a flow of permits issued in a calendar year, by the citizenship of the holder. It is not a count of students and not a count of enrolments. The full definitions are on Americans in France: the official numbers.

What we could not settle

• Whether the ministry's table includes the US students who enrol in a French institution through an exchange. Campus France says the ministry's system can identify them. The table's description does not say whether they are in the mobility count.
• How Campus France USA builds its figure of over 17,000 students a year.
• Any split by level or field of study for students of US nationality.

Open Doors and the US count of students abroad

The Institute of International Education publishes Open Doors, which counts US students abroad for academic credit from the US side, by destination, including France. Those figures come from US institutions and are a different series from the French one. We do not reproduce them. IIE's terms say its materials are provided for personal and institutional purposes and not for commercial use, and that they may not be copied or distributed without the owner's written consent. They give no licence that allows republication with attribution. The data are on Open Doors: All Destinations and IIE's terms are here.

Campus France publishes its own key figures on student mobility, with a table of the top 25 origin countries of foreign students in France. Its legal pages state no reuse terms, so we copy none of its tables. The figure we compare, 6,943 in 2023-2024, is also a row of the ministry's open data. The publication is at Campus France, key figures 2025.

How to cite these figures

The ministry's table is published under the Licence Ouverte v2.0 (Etalab), which allows reuse, including commercial reuse, if the source and the date of its last update are named. Our figures are extracts for the United States. The source and the day we read it:

Source: Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche (SIES), "Effectifs d'étudiants étrangers dans les établissements et les formations de l'enseignement supérieur", https://data.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/explore/dataset/fr-esr-effectifs-d-etudiants-etrangers-france/, Licence Ouverte v2.0 (Etalab), data read 28 October 2026.

The ministry's table was last modified on 24 March 2026. Eurostat lets anyone reuse its statistics if the source is named and asks for this form for a dataset:

Source: https://doi.org/10.2908/MIGR_RESFIRST, 28 October 2026

The ranks, shares and changes on this page are our arithmetic on those figures. Eurostat is not responsible for how this page presents its data. To cite this page:

EasyFranceNow, "American students in France: the official numbers", https://easyfrancenow.com/data/american-students-in-france, data read 28 October 2026.

Download all the figures as a CSV. Every row has its source, the query address, the day it was read and a flag for provisional values. The same columns as the other data files of this site.

Methodology

• Ministry open data. The dataset "Effectifs d'étudiants étrangers dans les établissements et les formations de l'enseignement supérieur" (fr-esr-effectifs-d-etudiants-etrangers-france) of the Département des études statistiques de l'enseignement supérieur, read through its API on 28 October 2026: every nationality for the rentrées 2013 to 2024, the row with the code USA for the United States. Dataset page, query. Licence: Licence Ouverte v2.0 (Etalab). Before using a row we checked that the columns by type of institution add up to the totals of their group, and that the United States has one row per year.
• Control against Campus France. The rentrée 2023 row (6,943 students, 16th among nationalities, +3% on a year and +8% on five years) is the figure printed in Campus France's key figures 2025, read in the PDF on 28 October 2026. The build stops if the table stops giving it.
• Eurostat. First permits for education reasons to US citizens in France, dataset migr_resfirst, copied with their flags from the figures of the France page, read on 28 October 2026 through the same pipeline. Query.
• Suppressed cells. The ministry publishes a count under 5 as "<5". We keep it as a missing cell and never as zero.
• What we do not do. We add no figure of our own beyond ranks, shares and changes computed from the tables, we merge no sources and we give no total number of American students in France.
• Updates. The ministry's table is yearly. The date on this page is the day we last read the sources.

For people planning a student move, the adviser checklist lists every step from the acceptance letter to the first residence permit, each with its official page, and the student visa guide for Americans explains the visa. The wider numbers on Americans in France are on Americans in France: the official numbers. How we check facts in general is on how we verify.

What each number means: the definitions of every measure on these pages, from the publishers' own metadata.